If you’re a fan of Guy Ritchie’s outlandish
films about British working class blokes (like Lock Stock and Two
Smoking Barrels and Snatch) then BOUNCERS is the comedy for
you. As you may have perceived, BOUNCERS (playing through April 27th—they
may add a few more shows—check at their website: stickballproductions.com) is
set in and around a scrappy English after hours club, with bouncers to keep the
order. Fittingly, you can see the play up close and personal in a
hole-in-the-wall club in Central
Square.
John Godber’s gritty slice of raucous
nightlife was a big hit in the U.K.
but this is its first outing in New England.
Director Bill Doncaster raises the energy—and the decibels—to fever pitch. You
can feel the reverberations of a packed nightspot at the Cantab, as soon as the
four bouncers (who play everyone else, too) start to chant and shout and sing,
“Get down, Get up and Get Together.”
There’s little plot (one character has a
through line) but who cares? The dialogue is outrageous and their off the wall
antics keep you convulsed. They embrace the raunchy with gusto, as if they have
no idea it’s offensive. The playwright switches situations and characters back
and forth very quickly and thanks to the crackerjack cast, you know immediately
where you are (even without a set). They’re the bouncers, then they’re drunken
wannabes trying to get past the gate. They’re four girls celebrating a
birthday, they’re clueless headbangers, they’re in a hair salon, they’re in the
loo. My favorite bits were the Mohawk coiffed punks wanting admission and a
Swedish video which had been played too many times.
Joe Siriani as “Lucky” Eric makes you feel truly
sorry for his streak of bad breaks. Poor lug, the ex-wife even comes into his
club with a new guy just to rub it in. Siriani shows us his mass of conflicting
emotions just below the surface. He wants to be kind. He wants to protect the
women he sees making fools of themselves—but he’s plenty angry and he wants
revenge.
Put a creepy red light on James Bocock and
he’s the nasty deejay who thinks up contests just to get the women to take off
their knickers and bras. Patrick Curran only has to widen his eyes to scare
away “undesirables” at the door and as for Seyi Ayorinde, he has charisma to
spare. Everone plays female, too, a la Monty Python, in a style that’s
audacious but not quite caricature. BOUNCERS is rank. BOUNCERS is raw…but it’s
funny as hell, too.